1) Pick a fic I've written.2) Give me a twist - a different AU, different order of events, genderswap, character swap, whatever. More than one is okay as long as it's manageable!3) Pick a scene or else leave it up to me and I'll pick one.

And I will rewrite a scene from that fic for you, using the requested twist.

Dissolution AU where it was all Rorschach's dream and Dan realizes he's upset about something and makes him bacon pancakes or something and they spend a nice day together. Because I will never have enough fix-it for the emotional trauma that fic caused.

Sound and sight come back in a blast of sensation. Rorschach is not gasping for breath and his heart does not pound, but there's a hard, hollow feeling under his lungs like when he's had too much caffeine and he knows even before the tears come who they are for.

He is so empty, and so cold.

He is strangely warm, for being so cold.

Across the room, the door hangs open to the hallway, and they must be in here with him already, must be calculating how best to destroy him. But the door isn't off its hinges. It sways slightly as a breeze from the open window catches it, and the window shouldn't be open either--

Something snakes around his middle, warm and possessive and familiar, and though he is not in the best position to judge, Rorschach could swear his heart stops.

*

"Man, you really let me sleep late," Daniel pronounces in the kitchen. He is strong and beautiful as he reaches into the high cupboard for two coffee mugs, as he stoops to retrieve a pan. He is in one piece.

Sometimes, on patrol, they rescue people from muggings and assaults only to find them glazed and catatonic. Shock, he thinks, and he understands now. He stares vacantly, eyes tracking but not focusing, and there is a hum in his head that is something like electricity.

"Guess you were really out," Daniel says. There's something metered and careful in it, and when he turns to look over his shoulder at Rorschach the tendons in his neck bunch and stand out and Rorschach knows what he tastes like, now--past skin and sweat. He does not know how he will choke down breakfast.

He must look ill, judging from the way Daniel is looking at him. "...buddy?"

He doesn't want to talk about it. He has been having nightmares his entire life and they have all been horrible; some have objectively been worse than this one was and he has always been able to deal with them, even if he cannot fathom what dark crevasse in his soul they climb out of or why he would... why he would ever...

He doesn't want to talk about it.

The pan settles to the range with a dull clatter. Daniel's hand is out, is on his shoulder, is holding him here keeping him from leaving stripping all of his control away and-

"No meat today," he says, throat tight around the words.

Daniel nods, squeezes his shoulder. He seems to understand something, even if he doesn't really know what; returns to the pantry to pull down the Bisquick.

"Bacon okay?" he asks, because of course bacon is the exception to everything, and Rorschach nods because words are too hard.

Ten minutes later, Daniel is putting the bacon pancakes down in front of him; is leaning to kiss the back of his neck, offering wordless assurance where it feels like he should be mouthing forgivenesses.

Rorschach closes his eyes, lets the warmth settle in his skin--sink in, and spread, and spread.

Laundry, Dan had never oiled the door hinges. He walked all the way downstairs without noticing anything amiss and had started speaking to Rorschach before realizing what was going on. He DOES realize what is going on.

Dan winces at the creak of the door, elbowing it open and bundling the laundry basket through ahead of him. Rorschach's supposed to be sleeping down here, or at least he'd looked ready to drop when Dan left him earlier, and he'd hate to cost him any of what Dan knows to be rare and valuable sleep.

"Sorry, man," he calls quietly down the stairs, a sort of stage-aside as he works his way down. "Didn't mean to--"

There's a clatter, in the dark, and then a thump. It sounds like someone falling off of a cot.

Damn it.

Without even thinking, Dan reaches for a light switch at the base of the stairs, because if he's fallen he'll need to see to get back up and if he's hurt himself--

Bright white light floods the room, searing.

Rorschach is in a heap on the floor, pants around his knees as he struggles to right himself--thousand watt flourescence bouncing blindingly off of his ass. His freckled, frankly pretty nice ass, Dan can't keep himself from noticing in the second or two before his brain puts it together:

Rorschach. In the dark. With his pants down. In an easily startlable state. With one hand still thrust protectively between his legs, as if to guard himself from judgment.

This is so hard! Especially with the no sad angst request, since Dan and Rorschach are made mostly of angst! I want to say a Mirrors to Windows swap where Dan is real and Rorschach the delusion, but that's so very angsty.

When Nite Owl finds him, it's at the end of a long week of bad nights--seven people in as many days that he couldn't save, their lives washed away into the gutters and the sidewalk cracks. Forgotten. If he'd been faster, cleverer, a better fighter, he could have done something, made a real difference.

He's always too late.

But just once, he isn't--he finds the man broken and bleeding, recognizes him for a fellow mask immediately. Panics, sure, but also manages to drag him back to the nest, patch up his injuries, get him through the night. One life saved, and one that might save many others. It's a beautiful, fractal thing, unfolding in his mind.

*

Two nights later, the man walks up to him in the streetlight, proposes they work together on their next bust. Nite Owl agrees without a second thought, and it doesn't occur to him until much later that no one with so badly broken an arm should have been up and active again so soon.

*

He introduces the both of them at the first Crimebusters meeting, expansively proud to be the only ones there already part of a working relationship. A duo. It sounds good, in his head.

It must not sound as good out loud, because everyone he says it to looks at him like he's just sprouted actual feathers and started talking in tongues. Eventually, he shuts up about it, and Rorschach looks smugly pleased.

*

"My name's Dan," he says, grinning through the awkwardness, trying to ignore how sweaty and awful he must look with the cowl pushed back. "...hi?"

Rorschach stares at him, stares and stares. The blots on his mask slow to a crawl.

"You, uh," Dan says, chewing his lip. His certainty, spontaneous and sure, that this was the right thing to do--it's fading. Fast. "You don't have to, uh."

But Rorschach reaches for his mask anyway, peels it away in a motion that is at once slow as the turning of the earth and far, far too fast--and underneath, there is nothing there.

oh god. where to begin?Ok, this sounds really sad, but. Tiny Grains of Earth. It's not Rorschach. However, Ror isn't dead. He's been held captive, and Dan has never been so happy to find someone in his life. Ror's obviously pretty pleased about it as well.Still too depressing, isn't it?